DSMapStudio Interface Overview

First launch feels busy: a dark, panel-heavy desktop interface, a 3D viewport, lists on every side. It's more organized than it looks, because the three editors — Map, Param, Text — all follow the same layout pattern. See that pattern and you stop hunting for things and start working. This complements the deep editor guides — the Map Editor, Param Editor, and Text Editor hubs cover what each does; this covers where everything is. Not installed yet? Installation and first project setup.

The overall layout

A single window built on a dark, immediate-mode (ImGui) interface. Across the top you switch editors — Map, Param, Text — each a full workspace for one kind of data in your project. You're always in one project at a time, and all editors read and write that project's files, so switching tabs just changes which part of the same mod you're editing. Top menus handle project actions (new/open), file operations (import/export, save), and settings.

The shared three-panel pattern

The insight that makes the whole interface click: each editor is three regions, left to right:

• Left — the index. A list or tree of what you can edit: maps and their objects, param tables, or text categories.
• Center — the main view. The selected thing: a 3D scene, a table of rows, or a list of entries.
• Right — the properties. The fields of what you've selected, where you change values.

Select on the left, see it in the center, edit it on the right. Every editor follows this, so learning one teaches the shape of all three.

The Map Editor

The pattern applied to a 3D world:

• Left — the map list (each entry a map ID) above the loaded map's object tree (Parts, Regions, Events).
• Center — the 3D viewport, a real Vulkan-rendered scene you fly through.
• Right — the selected object's properties: position, model, param references, draw groups, entity ID.

A real Map Editor window — object tree and properties around the 3D viewport:

It's the one part that needs a Vulkan GPU; the others don't.

The Param Editor

Same layout for tabular data:

• Left — the list of param tables (EquipParamWeapon, ItemLotParam, hundreds more).
• Center — the rows of the selected param, shown with Paramdex names and a search box at the top.
• Right — the fields (columns) of the selected row, where you edit values.

The most-used editor; the search box plus the Modified filter are how you navigate its thousands of rows.

The Text Editor

Same again for in-game text:

• Left — the text categories (weapon names, item descriptions, dialogue…).
• Center — the entries in the selected category, each an ID paired with a string.
• Right / inline — the editable text.

Because text entries share IDs with param rows, the Text and Param editors are often used together when adding content.

Navigation and hotkeys

Keyboard-and-mouse driven. In the Map Editor you fly the camera holding the right mouse button with W/A/S/D, move objects with the translate/rotate gizmo, Ctrl+D to duplicate, F to frame the selection — the full controls table is in the Map Editor guide. In Param and Text, the search boxes and arrow-key row navigation do most of the work. Keybinds are defaults and rebindable, so your exact keys may differ from another guide's.

Settings and keybinds

Project/display settings and the keybind list live in the top menus. The keybind menu is the authoritative reference for your build's shortcuts — if a key in any guide doesn't match, check there, since bindings change between versions and can be customized. Worth a glance early.

That's the whole interface: three editors, one three-panel pattern, a viewport that needs a GPU. Head straight to the editor you need — Param Editor hub for stats and items, Map Editor hub for placement, Text Editor hub for names — and set up a project first with first project setup if you haven't.